Fight against drinking water leaks: technicians listening to the pipes

Louise Sallé 6:55 a.m., May 23, 2022, modified at 6:57 a.m., May 23, 2022

Drinking water is a precious resource.

The droughts of recent years have already caused tensions on the supply, as in Provence, where tank trucks have sometimes transported this blue gold to municipalities in need of water.

In recent years, aware of this issue, communities have been doubling their vigilance to optimize their drinking water yield.

This is the case of the Syndicat des eaux d'Île-de-France, Sedif, which has entrusted the operation of its network to Veolia.

Five years ago, 1200 kilometers of pipes were "listened" each year by technicians to detect leaks.

Today, this research has extended to 2400 km per year, or twice that.

This Thursday morning, Abdellah Akalmous, technician in search of leaks, crisscrosses the streets of Antony, in the Paris suburbs.

Helmet on, he unscrews one by one the sidewalk hatches.

“I lower my acoustic sensor via the open hatch,” he describes.

It has a magnet so it allows me to have good contact with the driving", specifies Abdellah Akalmous.

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Listen to the sound of water to locate the leak

Once the microphone is on and his recorder is on, Abdellah listens to and analyzes the sound of water in his helmet... one that runs water from its tap, for example,” he explains.

This Veolia technician knows how to distinguish by ear the noise of everyday consumption from that of a leak.

And further on, he spots one: "It's a leak noise", he says, once the sound has been heard a few meters away.

"I'm going to move on to find out if that same sound comes back to the next point, and with what intensity."

By comparing the sounds on the whole street, Abdellah locates the faulty pipe.

And immediately report it to the repair team.

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From 15% water loss, the Sedif has fallen to less than 10% in five years

This tracking of leaks is not new.

But over the past five years, the number of channels listened to has doubled.

These sound analyzes make it possible to intervene urgently to repair the pipes and also feed a very valuable database, underlines Frédéric Michot, assistant to the director of network operation coordination at Veolia.

"All this information is used to develop algorithms, which allow us to determine predictive failure rates on the structures, in order to carry out network renewal programs," he says.

Five years ago, 15% of the water in the Sedif network was lost.

Today, thanks to these devices implemented, it is less than 10%.

That is half the average proportion of water that escapes from French pipes.